Geneva II postponed until the end of the year

Russian diplomat says the U.S. can’t convince the Syrian rebel groups to cohesively participate in the peace talks, causing the meetings delay.

The Geneva II Syria peace
conference has been postponed until possibly the end of the year largely
because the United States still has not managed to persuade the Syrian
opposition to participate, the Russian diplomat involved in the tri-party talks
said Tuesday.

Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign
Affairs Gennady Gatilov said America needed to put more pressure on the Syrian
opposition groups to talk them into participating in Geneva II.

The United Nations, Russia, the
U.S. are leading the talks, which the tri-party group had hoped to hold this
month in order to negotiate a peace deal between Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad and the rebel groups.

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"We felt that the Americans did not have
sufficient leverage over the oppositionists to consolidate them," Gatilov
said. "We indicated that the recent declarations of some of the opposition
leaders sounded disappointing, as they refuse to take part in the conference.
And we spoke about the need, nevertheless, to seek their participation."

In addition, according to
Interfax, the deputy minister said that the U.S. remained opposed to Iran’s
participation in the Geneva II talks, despite Russia’s insistence that the
country had a critical role in the process.

"We have tried again to
persuade them that Iran is an important participant of the process, who plays a
serious role in resolving the Syrian crisis and who can contribute positively,
and that it is therefore necessary to invite the country to the conference,” Gatilov
said.

The Russian diplomat added that
Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria, as well as the
majority of other Arab states, all agreed that Iran should participate.

"So far, our U.S. partners
have no understanding that Iran should take part in the forum," Gatilov
said, adding that these two issues meant the conference will be postponed for
an indefinite period.

According to previous ITAR-TASS
report, a source close to the meeting said that "Geneva II will not take
place earlier than December."

Brahimi this week also stated
that the Syrian oppositionists lacked consolidation and were not prepared to
participate in the peace conference.

"One of the problems
certainly involves the position of the opposition,"he said, emphasizing
that a new tri-party meeting between Russia, the U.S. and the UN would be held
on November 25, and expressed his hope that the
opposition would change their approach by that time.

A meeting of the leaders of the
Syrian National Coalition is scheduled for November 9 in
Istanbul, where they are expected to make a final decision as to their
participation in Geneva II.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday in
Moscow that the Syrian problem could not be resolved through a foreign, armed
intervention.

“It is necessary once and for all
to get rid of the illusions that the Syrian knot can be cut through foreign
intervention," Lavrov said. He
emphasized that the Geneva communiqué "is generally believed to be, in
essence, the sole coordinated basis for a peaceful resolution of the problem."